Trafficked

by Kim Purcell

  He let out a bark of a laugh, as if he’d been caught. He reached up and wrapped his arm around his wife’s waist, stopping her. “Lilichka, sweetheart, I meant that you could do anything you wanted in America. You’re smart and beautiful. Why not make more money?”

  “Being a doctor is a respectable job,” she said. “It’s good, honest money.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “You’ll be a great doctor.”

  Hannah wondered why he said she’d be a great doctor if she was already a doctor.

  Lillian squinted down at him, as if to see whether he was patronizing her, and then bent down to give him a quick peck on his nose. “Thank you.” She grabbed the cereal boxes and carried them to the cupboard. Then she stopped and threw her hands in the air. “Why am I clearing the table?” she asked, more to herself than anyone else. “I have to study.”

  Hannah felt guilty all of a sudden for eating.

  “You don’t have to do this anymore.” Sergey stood up, wrapped his arms around her, and gazed into her beautiful face. “Now you can focus on your studying.”

  “You’re right. I’m not used to this,” she said, and kissed him slowly on the lips. Hannah looked away, embarrassed. After a moment of kissing, the children started giggling and Lillian broke away. “Elena—I mean, Hannah,” Lillian said. “The laundry is piling up. After you eat, you can bring Michael to the playroom while you fold the clothes.” Lillian always referred to it as a playroom, but to Hannah, it was just a garage, not unlike the one where her father used to work on cars. It even had an oil stain on the concrete floor, which was what Lillian was hiding with the pink and blue children’s rug.

  “I have to go,” Sergey said, tousling Michael’s hair, then bending down to kiss Maggie’s forehead.

  “Bye, Papushka,” Maggie said.

  “Have a fun day, little rabbit,” he said, and then strode out of the room, holding his paper.

  Lillian followed him out of the room.

  Maggie blinked at Hannah with those big beautiful eyes of hers. “You can eat with me,” she said in English.

  “Okay,” Hannah answered her in English, then glanced at the door, worried about Lillian. She switched back to Russian. “Do you know how to hang this spoon on your nose?”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Hannah stretched her legs out and felt the hot sun on her skin. She’d been in Los Angeles for two weeks and was finally getting a chance to tan. In Moldova, that was what people her age did all summer. She wasn’t officially tanning, though. Officially, she was babysitting Michael and Maggie together, for the first time, and she’d come up with the great idea of going in the backyard and playing with buckets of water.

  It was already ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit at ten thirty in the morning. Ninety-five was thirty-five degrees Celsius. This was one of the unexpected things about America. Without converting things like Fahrenheit to Celsius, dollars to lei, and pounds to kilograms, she had no idea how much anything was. She knew twenty dollars was a lot, but it wasn’t until she converted it to lei and thought about how long it would take her to make that much at the market that it really sank in.

  She took a sip of the compote, a Moldovan drink she’d made with water, sugar, and mashed strawberries. Michael was mixing water in his buckets, pretending it was soup, and Maggie was being a good sport and pretending to eat it. “Michael, could you dump some water on my legs?” Hannah called.

  He ran over, giggling, holding a bucket full of sloshing water, and dumped it all over her legs and her shorts. She screamed. The water was freezing. “Okay, that’s enough.”

  “Do it to me,” Maggie said. Michael hurried back to Maggie, giggling.

  Hannah heard a lawn mower start up next door. She loved that sound. It was one of the sounds of America, a sound she never heard in Moldova. In the village, people let the ducks and the chickens eat the grass, and in the city, the few people with lawns had gardeners who cut the grass with long curved machetes.

  The lawn mower turned off. She glanced at the tall green fence. Was it the boy? Whoever it was started pushing the lawn mower along the fence to the front yard.

  Lillian was out—now was a good time to meet him. Once they were friends, Lillian would see that it was harmless. She felt nervous all of a sudden; maybe he wouldn’t be interested in meeting her. After all, she was just a nanny.

  She glanced at Michael and Maggie. Michael was dumping water on Maggie’s feet, giggling. She hurried across the lawn and down the gravel path beside the house, past the garbage cans, to the gate, but she was too late.

  The boy was crossing the street with the lawn mower. He pushed it up the neighbor’s driveway and a short, older man met him and handed him some bills. Then the boy began mowing his lawn. She couldn’t believe it. He had a job, just like she did.

  “Hannah!” Maggie yelled from the backyard.

  She remembered how Lillian had said to be careful, that a child could drown in a bucket of water, and she sprinted back up the walkway. Michael was sitting cross-legged, pouring water from one little bucket to another.

  Maggie was standing, hands planted on her hips. “Where did you go?” she asked in Russian. She always spoke Russian when she was upset.

  “I had to throw something out,” Hannah answered.

  “I thought you left us.”

  Hannah gave her a funny look. “Why would I leave you?”

  “Mama said if you left, I should call her.”

  “I’m not going to leave you,” Hannah said.

  “Alexei’s girl left.”

  “Who’s Alexei?”

  She shrugged. “Paavo’s friend.”

  No wonder, Hannah thought.

  “One day, she just left the kids all alone in the house and she never came back.”

  “I’d never do that, don’t worry.” Hannah walked over to the hose and picked it up, hoping to distract her. “Are you ready for a water fight?”

  She turned it on full blast and let the water stream up like a fountain, falling on their heads. Maggie seemed shocked at first, but then she screamed and charged at Hannah. She grabbed the hose away, giggling, and sprayed Hannah and Michael and even the back windows of the house, like she was an action hero in a Hollywood movie.

  Michael jumped in a mud puddle that was forming. Hannah worried about that puddle, briefly, but then Maggie turned the hose on her, spraying her in the face. Hannah grabbed the hose, laughing, Michael threw himself at them, and they all fell down, giggling in the mud.

  “You are a mud monster!” Michael yelled. Hannah looked at Maggie and they started laughing so hard, Hannah’s belly hurt.

  And then she heard a car engine on the road.

  Her heart started pounding and she jumped to her feet.

  “Quick, let’s get cleaned up.”

  As they were toweling themselves off, Maggie glanced at her with admiration. “I’ve never heard you laugh,” Maggie said in Russian, then switched to English. “You’re cool.”

  Hannah realized she hadn’t laughed, not in a long time. This was the most fun she’d had in ages. “You are cool also,” she answered in English, helping Maggie up.

  An hour later, when Lillian’s Cadillac SUV came up the driveway, Hannah was sitting with the children on a blanket on the dry part of the lawn. The children were still wearing their bathing suits, but she’d hosed them off, and they were eating a snack of sliced-up apples and drinking strawberry compote.

  The side gate opened. Lillian’s heels kicked up the gravel along the path. When Lillian came around the corner of the house, she gasped, bringing her hand to her face.

  Hannah looked around. The children were clean. She’d even dried off the water on the windows with a newspaper, like Babulya had shown her.

  “What?” she asked.

  “
You have made a swimming pool on my lawn.”

  There was a fairly large mud puddle—she hadn’t been that concerned about it before.

  “Mommy, it was so much fun,” Maggie gushed in English.

  “Russian, Maggie,” Lillian said automatically.

  Maggie switched back. “We played restaurant with the buckets and we ran through the hose. I got to wear my new bathing suit.” She stood up and posed, sticking out her behind, which made Lillian smile at least.

  “Did you put sunscreen on them?” Lillian asked Hannah.

  “Yes, she did,” Maggie said, grinning. Thankfully, Maggie had reminded her.

  “Well, it’s not a total disaster,” Lillian said, tossing back her blonde hair. “I had a good meeting and it looks like you had fun. Even if our lawn is a mess.” She looked at Hannah and nodded. “Good job.”

  Michael let out a shriek and tackled Hannah and she fell back, tickling him, and they all laughed, even Lillian.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It was eleven at night, three weeks and four days after Hannah had arrived in America. She heaved the garbage bag from the kitchen into one of the bins and stood outside, enjoying the one quiet moment of her day. The air was cooling off, finally.

  She looked up at the crescent moon in the sky and wondered if her mother was looking down on her. In Moldova, Hannah had hated taking out the garbage. The smell was vile, especially in the summer, but the worst part was touching the grimy handle on the garbage chute.

  Here, garbage duty was a brief moment when she could go outside alone and relax. She’d never worked so hard in her whole life, but once she got paid, it would be worth it. She’d send a thousand dollars to Babulya to pay for her cataract surgery and then she wouldn’t have to worry about her babushka falling into a manhole. They’d pay her soon, any day now.

  She unlocked the side gate, tipped the garbage container onto its wheels, and rolled it to the curb. Normally there was no one on the street, but today she saw an older couple hobbling down the sidewalk toward her—and there appeared to be a duck waddling behind them. She stepped to the side and squinted. Yes, it was a duck.

  The man’s hair swooped up, not unlike the fluff of feathers on the duck’s behind. The wife plodded on, eyes ahead. She was looking at Hannah, but not smiling. Hannah had heard Americans always said hello in the streets, and she waited for that now. Already she could smell their sweet, dusty old-people smell—it reminded her of Babulya minus the hot pepper. She wondered how her babushka was doing at Petru’s house. She’d given Lillian two letters for her babushka and one for Katya, but she hadn’t received any letters back yet.

  They were passing her. Not saying anything. Maybe she was supposed to say it because she was younger. “Hello,” she said in English.

  The man and the woman didn’t even look at her, and the duck marched past, ignoring her too. A gate opened behind her. She heard the bumping sound of a garbage can on wheels rolling down the driveway. Her breath caught inside her. The boy next door was pulling a garbage can toward her. It looked like she’d said hello to the duck. How embarrassing. She wondered if the boy had heard.

  “Quack,” he said to her.

  She didn’t know this word. She stepped backward, her mind rushing with things to say, but it all came to her in Russian. “Yes?” she asked, which didn’t make sense at all.

  “Just taking the garbage out.” He sucked in a breath that stopped halfway into his mouth and then tucked his head down in embarrassment.

  She’d seen the boy many times, moving around the upper rooms of his house or walking down the sidewalk in the oversize baseball jerseys he always wore, that she felt like she knew him. She had to introduce herself at least.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but he hurried away so quickly she didn’t have a chance to say anything. She couldn’t very well run after him, yelling, “My name is Hannah. What is your name?” And it was strange to say good-bye when they hadn’t really said hello, so she just watched his back, her tongue sitting in her mouth like an overcooked carrot.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The next Thursday, Hannah vowed she’d talk to the boy next door when he took out the garbage, so he wouldn’t think she was crazy. It was the perfect day, because Lillian and Sergey had gone out to celebrate Lillian taking her Step One test for the USMLE, the first test for a foreign doctor in America.

  Lillian had been studying constantly for the test over the last two weeks and still hadn’t paid her. Hannah planned to remind her soon, but Lillian was in such a good mood today, Hannah hadn’t wanted to ruin it.

  She’d do it tomorrow. Or in the next week, definitely.

  She checked the clock on the oven. Ten o’clock. She opened the back door and looked out across the lawn to the neighbor’s house.

  She grabbed some paper towels and a spray bottle. One more room to clean. She went into the master bathroom. It looked spotless, except for a few hairs, but every day she didn’t clean it, Lillian knew. She sprayed the counter and wiped the hairs off.

  Good enough. She went into the bedroom and looked at Lillian’s bookshelf, at the medical textbooks and the Russian-English dictionary Lillian had warned her not to touch. She’d tried to read one of the textbooks when Lillian left them in the dining room to pick up Maggie, but she hadn’t been able to understand even a single sentence with all the medical terminology. She had to work up to it. Despite everything, she couldn’t give up. One day, she’d be a doctor.

  She pulled the dictionary off the shelf and dropped down on the bed with its soft white duvet comforter. It made a puffing sound. She lay back and stretched her arms out. This was what it would feel like to be Lillian.

  She flipped over, opened the dictionary, and started looking up words she could use on the boy next door. The chocolate sat on Lillian’s pillow, just inches from her head. She could smell the dark chocolate and imagined the truffle melting in her mouth. Lillian was probably counting them, she thought. She looked up another word.

  The chocolate sat there, calling to her. It was Swiss chocolate, in a shiny red wrapper. Everyone knew how delicious Swiss chocolate was.

  She reached over and grabbed it. One chocolate. Lillian would never know. The tinfoil paper crinkled as she ripped it off. The chocolate filled her mouth and melted into the space between her lips and her gums.

  “Hello!” Lillian was downstairs.

  Hannah leaped from the bed, licking her lips.

  “Hannah?” Lillian called.

  “I’m up here.” She grabbed the dictionary, shoved it onto the bookshelf, then ran back to the bed to snatch up the chocolate wrapper and stuff it in her pocket. Lillian was almost at the top of the stairs. She wiped at the corners of her mouth. The duvet looked like she’d been sleeping under it. She bent over, smoothed it down in one quick sweep, and turned as Lillian came into the room.

  She could still taste the creamy truffle in her mouth. Did she have chocolate on her teeth? Did her breath smell of chocolate?

  Lillian stood in the doorway, wearing a low-cut red dress. Her blonde hair fell softly around her bare shoulders, and she shook her head like she was a model. “What are you doing?” she asked, smiling. Not accusatory. Just happy.

  Hannah ran her tongue over her teeth in case they were covered with chocolate. “Just finishing up. I have to get your truffle and then I’m all done. Sorry I didn’t do it earlier.”

  “They’re delicious, aren’t they?” Lillian asked, as if she knew Hannah had just eaten one.

  “Are they?” Hannah’s voice squealed at the end of her question, and her heart started to beat faster in her chest.

  “You haven’t tried one?” Lillian asked.

  Hannah hesitated, worried it was a test. “I—um—I didn’t think I was allowed,” she said, which was true enough.

  “I wondered
why they lasted so long.” Lillian’s eyes shone, cheeks aglow. “Why don’t you get two and we can have our chocolates together?” She gave Hannah a queenly smile, revealing lipstick on her teeth. “Go on,” she said, and waved her hand in a condescending way that itched at Hannah as she ran down the stairs.

  She dragged one of the metal kitchen chairs over to the refrigerator and stood on it.

  The tinkling of ice in a glass startled her. Sergey had wandered into the kitchen from the living room, drinking cola with whiskey, his favorite drink when he was alone and had no one to impress. The smell of alcohol reminded her of pee, maybe because her father peed himself when he drank too much. Her mother always cleaned it up, like everything else, but Hannah sure wouldn’t if she were his wife. She’d make him clean up his own mess. At least Sergey wasn’t a drunk, she thought. He drank no more than an average Russian.

  She reached into the upper cupboard and took two chocolates from the truffle box.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, as if he was just curious, but his eyes were jumping from her face to her breasts. Why did men always think you didn’t see them looking at your breasts? She’d even caught teachers looking at her.

  “Getting a truffle for your wife,” she said, emphasizing “wife.”

  “Ah,” he said, and took a swig of his drink.

  She crossed her arms over her breasts so he wouldn’t see them bounce, jumped from the chair, and hurried out of the room. When she got upstairs, Lillian was taking off her nylons in long sweeping motions. Her red dress flipped up, revealing black lace panties. There would be sounds coming from upstairs tonight.

  Hannah glanced at the clock—five minutes before eleven. Last time she’d met the boy at eleven. She wondered if he was hoping she’d be out there again.

  Lillian gave her a genuine smile. “You have the chocolate?”

  Hannah handed her one truffle and kept the other for herself. She peeled the paper off the truffle and popped it in her mouth.